


where i'm supposed to be (will you hold me)

by outspaced



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Could get a little sad, F/F, Outspaced attempts to write, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outspaced/pseuds/outspaced
Summary: What goes through Izzie's mind when she shows up at the Gardners' doorstep in s2ep06
Relationships: Casey Gardner & Izzie, Casey Gardner/Izzie
Comments: 3
Kudos: 61





	where i'm supposed to be (will you hold me)

**Author's Note:**

> A very short thing I did because I'm bullying my poor girl Izzie. Read with caution because while I didn't go into details, I did talk about the creepy boyfriend. Atypical's portrayal of autism isn't the best but it's not the worst. The puzzle pieces irk me though. Say hi to me on Tumblr at outspaced-writes. I'm open to writing more angst for the girl. Or soft Cazzie things if you want.

Izzie is terrified. 

Izzie is terrified, even when she tells Casey that she’s not scared of that asshole, of her mother’s latest ex-boyfriend-turned-current-boyfriend-again whose name she can’t even bring herself to think about because with it comes him getting high out of his mind and yelling, throwing things. That, somehow, isn’t what scares her the most about him. It isn’t how she has to shield her siblings from him, who are now more of her own children at this point, it’s not that. It’s selfish, really. 

What she hates the most about him is how he sneaks little comments about her and barges into her room when she’s supposed to be asleep and the worst part is, her mother says nothing. She says nothing, when her boyfriend eyes her teenage daughter with a predatory gaze. She says nothing, when Izzie finally breaks down, handing her siblings over to their grandmother, even when her brother gives her a heartbroken gaze. Her little brother, barely 12, becomes the adult when she’s gone. Their grandmother is old, she can’t keep up with a rowdy 7-year-old and a screaming baby. 

His eyes have lost the shine that comes believing everything right’s with this world and he lost his childish innocence the first time Izzie dropped them off with their grandmother and disappeared for the first time. Over that one night, when she had disappeared in tears and returned with scratches, she’d seen how much he’d grown. He assumed the role of the responsible adult and the worst thing was that he understood. He told her to take time off for herself and that he would manage with their grandmother’s help for one night. He told her how grateful he was for her always putting them first and how he loved her and she needed this break and he would make her take it. 

Izzie told herself that she wouldn’t be like their mother, she wouldn’t force them to grow up before they had to but she did. She still did and she hated herself for it. She just couldn’t take it anymore and she needed a break. Still, she hates herself even as she sinks into Casey’s arms, thinking how she couldn’t be any better than her mother. She doesn’t stop thinking about how she abandoned her siblings the same way their mother often did. She was just like her mother and she was disgusting for it. Despite this, she lets Casey hold her for a while, sobbing, and lets herself drink in the comfort and the warmth and she lets herself be safe, even if only for a while. 

It felt so selfish, to leave them to come here and lose herself in Casey’s embrace. How she felt about a grown man shouldn’t be worse than having to use her body to shield her tiny younger sister from hurled insults and the crushed beer cans that came with them. She should be there, she thinks, to hold her siblings and tell them everything’s going to be okay, instead of taking off— in case he has learned to check their grandmother’s house, she reasons— and hiding from the stupid jerk. He would never do anything to her, she tells herself, because her mother’s body should be enough for him and she would be safe enough around him. She knew how to defend herself and he wouldn’t go after her that way. He couldn’t.

She tells Casey none of this, still pretending to be tough, even though she must have already seen through it. It might have come from having to pretend to be strong all the time. If Izzie wasn’t afraid, her little siblings had nothing to be afraid of. Izzie is never afraid. She can’t be. So she lies next to Casey in the fort, something so childish that she yearns for. She feels safe, for once in a very long while, her worries all pushed to the furthest reaches of her mind. She could think about them tomorrow, when the guilt rained down. But, for now, she was safe and she was alright and Casey was here and everything was going to be okay. 

What Izzie likes about the Gardners’ house is that it’s a home. She knows that it’s a broken, broken family but, here, it feels more like a family than hers could ever be. It feels like she could step through the door and leave her worries on the porch, that nobody would hurt her under this roof. They might have been broken but it was safe. This little fort was a nook away from the world, where everything was perfect and she could laugh and joke with Casey, weightless. She wonders, just for a moment, what she has done to deserve this. It was unbearably nice of Casey to take her in and keep her mind off things with silly jokes and scary stories, so she can be scared of fictional monsters and not the very real one who waits for her back in the apartment. It feels too perfect here. 

Of course, she has to ruin it when Nate comes over. Still, Nate and Casey are the two people she’s quite sure she loves and she feels safe. She feels safe when she falls asleep on the couch, mid movie. She could never fall asleep anywhere but in the safety of her supposedly lockable room that was shared with her sisters— she found out, later on, that the boyfriend could pick locks— where she could be alone. She could never be comfortable enough in her own house to fall asleep on the couch where anyone could see. This was why she cried when her brother volunteered to sleep on the couch when they could no longer all squeeze into the room. She should have been the one to assume that role, being the oldest and most responsible, but he’d made a face like he always did when he lied and told her that the baby would cry for her at night, anyway. 

She doesn’t question it when she wakes in Casey’s bed before the sun is up, with Casey’s long arms comfortably flung around her. She shifts, pressing into Casey a little more, before drifting back to sleep. Her bed is pleasantly warm and soft and everything feels so right and perfect that for a moment, Izzie believes that it will be.


End file.
